the stars

[Heywood]

The "wasted space" argument is not a compelling argument against the existence of God.

What's compelling is the apparent dissonance between theists who believe that God created humans to deliver their "souls" into a "spiritual communion" with him and decided that the best route to take is the world we live in with its hostile conditions to (physical) human life lurking around at nearly every corner in a Universe that--considering its scale of magnitude--is simply unfathomable in its irrelevance to this goal.

Negative Pickup.

The universe as it is might simply be a means to accomplish a goal. That goal might be to bring into existence beings who could freely choose to love God but who are not directly designed to love God.

One contradiction I see theists often make is claiming that God wants us to love him as an act of our own free will. But in a second breath they will claim that we are designed by God. A windmill doesn't grind grain into flower because of its free will. A windmill grinds grain into flower because it is designed to grind grain into flower. A human designed to love God doesn't love God because of its own free will....he/she loves God because he/she is designed to love God.

If I wanted something that would grind copious amounts of grain into flour that wasn't designed by me to grind grain into flower.....I would need to create a massively-huge universe.....just like ours with emergent properties.....just like ours. And if I am all powerful, I could do this without even breaking a sweat. I could do this with no effort at all. And since I am eternal, any time it takes would be merely an instant to me. From my perspective, there would be no way to accomplish my goal that was more efficient.

The reason you think in terms of "best route" is because you anthropomorphize God. Put yourself in Gods shoes instead of putting God in your shoes. The apparent dissonance will go away.